The World Bank does not see the newly created "Bank of the South" as a competitor to fund projects in Latin America, but as a "complement" to other sources of financing the region, a top executive of the Washington-based multilateral institution said on Monday.
Conceived by Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, an opponent of US policies, to fund projects independently from multilateral institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank of the South took its first steps in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of October.
"Certainly this is an alternative. This is a complement", Pamela Cox, the World Bank's vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, told Reuters about in an interview ahead of the IMF autumn meetings in Washington later this week.
"I think they are another useful tool, I think countries should have a choice where they go and I also think the World Bank has changed a lot in the last ten years," she added. Cox said the World Bank is already more flexible with its clients, offering new types of loans for different types of governments, no matter what their ideological orientation.
"We are not a political institution," she said. "We are not preaching a certain way of doing things, we are engaged in Latin America". As a competitive advantage, the official said World Bank's experts offer analytical experience and can bring other successful experiences around the globe to projects in Latam. She rebutted criticism that the bank still requires too many conditions and is driven by US interests, although its president is traditionally an American.